In the early 1970's, there was a massive explosion of Italian horror films known as Giallo. Building on the work of great Italian horror director's like Mario Bava, these films were a combination of horror and crime thriller that were very unique and a joy to watch. In Gialli, the visuals were more important than anything. Story was secondary. Casting was secondary. Getting good actors didn't even matter because all films were dubbed over (poorly) anyway. Gialli tried to find the most beautiful way to murder people, and the single-minded focus to that bizarre desire is what makes the films so interesting to watch today.
No film exemplified these qualities better than Dario Argento's Suspiria, which was odd because Suspiria isn't really a Giallo at all. It didn't have the mystery element that was a hallmark of the Genre. What it did have was the extreme focus on visuals over everything else. It had the same slick style. It certainly had all of the same problem's the other gialli did, right down to a pretty poor dub job. Yet it wasn't a Giallo. In many ways, Suspiria is a hard film to classify.
When I decided to count down the best
horror films of the decade, I ran into a problem ranking #1. Should I
do the scariest movie of the decade, which would probably be Inside?
Or would it be better to do the best movie in the horror genre, which
is Pan's Labyrinth. Eventually, I decided on a compromise: The #1
movie would be the most flawlessly made terrifying horror movie. That
honor goes to Rec.
Rec is a simple story, well told.
Angela Vidal (Manuela Vascal), a reporting, is recording for her show
in a local fire station, when the firemen get an emergency call.
They head out to an apartment complex to help an injured woman, only
to be attacked by her. She turns out to be a zombie The complex is
quarantined, and Angela and her cameraman are trapped in with the
rest of the residents. At first, they try to document everything that
is going on, to show the people on the outside just how unjust the
quarantine was, but as the zombie virus begins to spread they start
becoming more and more concerned for there own safety.
This film is a found footage film, and
it really utilizes the style. The film opens at the fire station,
with Angela interviewing the rest of the cast. She is completely
adorable in these scenes, and it really helps build her character and
the audience's sympathies towards her. Then, after the initial
excitement happens, she takes time out to interview everyone. This
slows the film down, which sets us up to be even more shocked by the
next big scares, while giving us an opportunity to meet everyone else
in the apartment complex. They are all interesting, and it is quite
funny watching them awkwardly try not to look stupid on camera. It
makes them all feel like real people.
This makes it all the harder to deal
with them all becoming zombies. That is one thing I can appreciate
about the 28 day's later fast moving zombies: if one zombie is a
credible threat, then you are a lot more open to make a film with a
small cast of character's that turn into zombies. Sacrificing the
scope of the zombie attack actually increases the tragedy, because
the only people affected happen to be the only people we care about.
The film's final act is perfect. The
character's manage to escape the immediate danger of the zombie
attack by hiding in the supposedly abandoned penthouse apartment. It
quickly becomes apparent that the penthouse was quite recently
occupied. They slowly search each room, coming up with more and more
disturbing things each time, until eventually they stumble upon
patient zero. She is corpse-thin, decrepit, and absolutely
terrifying. It is one of the most pulse-pounding climaxes to a film I
have ever seen.
Rec is a film that should not be
missed. The director's, Paco Plaza and Jaume Belaguero, have earned
my respect and admiration with this film. Unlike most found footage
films, where the camera feels like a hindrance, this film feels
perfect. The story they are telling is small enough to be told with a
single camera, the demands for pacing work with the narrative, which
only work with the single camera. It all fits together perfectly. I
dont understand why the things that don't work in other film's are so
spectacularly successful here, but I know that they do. Rec is a film
that can't be missed.
French actress
Béatrice
Dalle scares
me. Of all of the slasher film serial killers, she plays the most
terrifying one, the nameless antagonist of Inside. She breaks into an
extremely pregnant women's house and tries to steal her unborn baby.
The whole time, she is freaking out worse than the protagonist is.
Her drive is insane, she wants to steal the baby for reasons that are
completely unfathomable to anyone else but her. She is convincingly
unstable and constantly unnerving.
The
main character of Inside is Sara Scarangelo (Alyson Paradis), the
aforementioned pregnant women. She is still mourning the death of her
husband, and she isn't ready to take care of a baby on her own. That
is basically the entirety of her character. She is the perfect
helpless victim. While there isn't a whole lot to her character,
Alyson Paradis plays her quite well.
There
are basically no other character's in the film. People keep going
into the house to wish the mother well, and they keep getting
murdered. For the most part, they are your standard slasher fare.
Nothing too remarkable here. They all die incredibly brutal ways.
One
of the first things people here about Inside is how gory the film is,
but that isn't quite accurate. The film is gory, yes, but not as much
as a film like Cabin Fever or Hostel. The reason the film feels so
much worse is how the director, Julien Maury, handles the gore. He
gives each injury a lot of weight, so even scenes that aren't that
gory feel like the nastiest thing you have ever seen. Part of it is
the way he shoots it, part of it is that we actually care about the
protagonist.
From
a story perspective, the film is completely unremarkable. The main
character spends about two-thirds of the film's running time locked
in her bathroom, and the villain spends most of the time trying to
break through the door. People come in, people die. Rinse and repeat.
It is the basic slasher setup done insanely well. People who enjoy
horror movies with strong narratives need not apply.
No,
Inside really only does one thing well: terrifying the audience. For
horror movies, that is one of the trickiest things to pull off, and
probably the most important. Between Beatrice Dalle's absolutely
insane performance and the way the killings are handled, the film
does a great job of creating a sense of fear. There is not a single
moment where you feel safe, even when our hero breaks out of the
bathroom and starts kicking ass. It doesn't have the same vibe as the
final girl showdown does in other slasher's: there is a real sense of
desperation, made all the more striking when you realize that the
final girl's in other slasher's are fighting seven foot tall hockey
mask wearing immortals, and Sara is fighting Beatrice Dalle, a women
barely as tall as her.
This
film is probably the scariest film of the decade.
American remakes of foreign films are
usually terrible. They are the most sleazy kind of cash grab, taking
a great movie that isn't widely seen in America and trying to make
lightning strike twice. The people assigned to make the movies are
usually poorly equipped for the job, people who don't understand what
made the original so unique in the first place. So, when I heard that
the director of Cloverfield made an American remake of the incredible
Swedish vamprie romance Let The Right One In, I immediately wrote it
off as one of “those films” and didn't bother going to see it in
theaters. That was a mistake.
Both films are amazing. They both tell
the same incredible tale well, in their own unique styles. The
director of the remake, Matt Reeves, stunned me with his great
directing. He kept in nearly everything that made the original unique
while presenting it in his own unique style.. Let Me In has humbled
me.
Both films star a 12 year old boy who
is constantly bullied and dreams of revenge. He manages to be both
endearing and creepy, a tragic character. In time he befriends a
young girl who moves in next door, who is also endearing and creepy.
And a vampire, as it turns out. In time, they grow closer and closer,
until they eventually fall in love.
But this isn't like the teen vampire
romance stories that are popular right now. The inherently disturbing
aspects the concept, the things the other films shy away from, are
embraced in this film. The vampire character is eternally 12 years
old, rather than 19. She comes off as alien and creepy, possibly even
manipulative. The vampire rules she has to follow are portrayed as
mysterious and dangerous. We don't really know anything about her for
sure by the end of it. But you still like her.
That is what this film does so well, it
pits you against yourself. Intellectually, you might know that the
She is dangerous and bad for our main character, but watching the two
of them together makes you hope that they work out. The main
character's might creep you out in one scene, but in the next you try
to forget about that as you watch their story unfold. You wish for a
happy ending when you know no happy ending is possible.
The main differences between the two
versions are stylistic, while the plot and dialogue is nearly
identical in both versions. The new version, Let Me In, does shy away
from a few plot points the original mentioned, while emphasizing
others. But they are minor points in the grand scheme of the film.
The real differences come in with the camerawork. Let Me In's camera
is hyper-focused. It really shows you the world from one character's
perspective, and it is extremely effective. You feel like you are
right there with the character's as they go about their day. The
directing of Tomas Alfredson is more traditional. It was competent
but unremarkable. In the end, if you really despise subtitles, you
can watch Let Me In without missing out on much. If you can stand
subtitles, however, then I would recommend that you watch the
original.
Then watch the new one afterward.
They're worth it.
Brief Aside: Ironically, the freedom Matt Reese had
in this film allowed him to make the film even more claustrophobic
and personal than his last film, Cloverfield, even though that film
was shot in first person perspective (which really makes me question
why found footage films exist in the first place)
The spiritual sequel to The Devil's
Backbone, Pan's labyrinth is even better than its predecessor. Taking
place after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the film focuses on
Ofelia (Ivana Barquero), a young girl using her imagination to escape
the bleak world around her. Her mother married a terrible man,
Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez), and is sick with his baby. Ofelia sneaks
around, constantly hearing whispers of the big nasty world around
her, but being unable to do anything to help.
So Ofelia makes her own world. She goes
and visits with faeries and fauns. She is a hero, who can do anything
that is required of her. She is a princess, working to win back her
throne and escape her life forever. In her world, anything is
possible. When her mother is sick, she can heal her. She is in
control there. The tale is told from Ofelia's perspective, so it is
often jarring to see her behavior from the perspective of one of the
adult's. In Ofelia's head, it all makes sense. Objectively, it is
absolutely bizarre.
Just as The Devil's Backbone was about
helplessness, Pan's Labyrinth was about hopelessness. The war was
already over. The “freedom fighters” fight for vengeance, not
freedom. Every death was unnecessary, all the suffering was for
nothing. If The Captain died, he would be replaced by a different
captain. That is what struck me the most about this movie; there was
nothing worth fighting for anymore, but people kept fighting and
dying for nothing. No wonder Ofelia dreamed of a better world.
The Captain is another one of Guillermo
Del Toro's trademark scummy villains. He is obsessed with honor and
the family name above all else. He desires order and obedience from
his servants and family members, and nothing else. He is cold and
uncaring towards his wife, and he only seems interested in his son to
keep up his legacy. He has no feelings towards Ofelia at all, unless
she misbehaves. Add on to that that he is a war criminal working for
a fascist regime, and you have a great bad guy.
But the true star of the show is
Ofelia. She is perfectly acted. You feel her earnestness and her
innocence. You see her happiness and her desperation. She loves her
baby brother and is scared for her mother. You want to protect her,
but it is clear that no protection is possible. One by one, the
people who are supposed to keep her safe fail her.
Pan's Labyrinth is probably the darkest
fairy tale you will ever see. Even Ofelia's imaginary world isn't
nice, with nasty beasts waiting, hungry and anxious. It really
hammers home that there is nowhere safe.
Between the eerie Faun and the
monstrous child eating Pale Man, Ofelia's world is a reflection of
her surroundings.
After watching the film, I am tempted
to imagine just as she did. I want to believe that what she saw was
real. That magic exists, and she escaped the mortal world to live
forever as a princess. I wish I could believe it.
I'm not sure I have ever described a
horror film as delightful before, but Trick R Treat is absolutely
delightful. A horror anthology in the vein of Creepshow, focusing on
the best night of the year, October 31st. It combines a
sense of fright with a sense of fun. This film channels the spirit
of Halloween effortlessly. Its like the horror A Chrismas Story.
In the world of Trick R treat, everyone
has a dark secret, and nothing is what it seems. All of the customs
we observe for Halloween aren't just for fun, but are also for
survival. Creatures stalk the night, and if you break the rules you
will fall prey to them. The film is almost reverent of Halloween. It
has a lot of respect for the holiday and it's history, the old
tradition's and what makes it still popular today.
The film is excellently plotted. Rather
than being a traditional anthology, all of the stories are
connected to the others in some way. It gives the world a sense of
discovery, seeing references to the other stories, and having
character's from both stories cross. Some of them are extremely
subtle, to the point where you only notice them after repeated
viewings. The stories are all connected through a central character,
Sam, the spirit of the holiday. Sam watches everyone as they go about their business. As long as they uphold the tenants of Halloween, they are free to do whatever else they want.
All of the stories focus on common
themes, but shift dramatically in tone. The first, the tale of a
sadistic principal who kills people with poisoned Halloween candy, is
darkly comic throughout. A lot of the Principal's action's are over
the top to the point of hilarity. The next story is genuinely creepy.
It is the tale of a group of kid's visiting an allegedly haunted
quarry. A flashback sequence features kids in the most inexplicably
terrifying costumes I've ever seen. The third story is interspersed
between the others. It's the tale of a group of teenage girls going
to a party and having fun, and trying to get their friend laid. They
leave her alone to find a date, and she is stalked by a mysterious
stranger. The final story is the tale of an old, bitter man who is
does not respect the Holiday. He is haunted by Sam, who turns into a
genuinely disturbing villain in this story. All of the main
character's in these stories have dark secrets, and watching them all
twist and turn around each other is an absolute blast.
This film is an absolute joy to look
at. The special effects are all unusually good for a direct-to-DVD
film. One transformation sequence in particular is probably my
favorite transformation sequence of all time. The final scene with
Sam is incredibly engaging. Sam fills staircases with candy. Marbles,
and glass. He writes creepy messages on the walls, fills the yard
with jack-o-lanterns. It is really beautiful. Even the more grounded
stories are well-directed.
It takes everything that is great about
the holiday and encapsulates it. Watching this film makes it feel
like Halloween. It touches the slightly demented child in all of us.
Is it scary? Not really. And yet, that doesn't matter. Sliding this
DVD into my player is a Halloween tradition for me, just as much as
passing out candy and carving jack-o-lanterns.
The Others has one of the best horror
premises for a horror movie I've ever heard. Nicole Kidman plays
Grace Steward, an extremely strict and protective mother of two
children. The children in question suffer from a severe allergy to
sunlight, so they must be kept in near complete darkness all the
time. They cannot leave their house, and an incredibly complex series
of rules is maintained to keep them in near perfect darkness at all
times. The children are worried that their mother is going mad, and
the mother is worried as well. Meanwhile, the house is being haunted,
and they can't leave.
This is the greatest setup I have ever
seen. There is huge conflict from without and within. There is the
question of what is and isn't real. The classic problem of film's
being scariest in the dark when the vast majority of people's time
spent awake is during the day: Solved. The eternal question “why
not just leave the house if it is being haunted?”: Answered. It
would take a considerable amount of time and work to make a film like
this bad, and the people who made the film used that time to make it
amazing instead.
Nicole Kidman's character is really put
through the wringer in this movie. Her husband had just died in the
war, and now she keeps hearing things in their house. The new
servants she hired seem to be up to something, but she had no
evidence but her sneaking suspicions. She has no one to talk to, she
can't leave her children alone. They even seem scared of her, because
she lost her temper with them once or twice. She can't hide behind
her rigid facade forever, something has to give.
This really is a film all about its
main character. Yes, there are sneaky servants and nasty ghosts, but
it is Grace's reaction to these events that make the movie. Her
melancholy infects the rest of the film, giving it a grimness that it
would not otherwise have had. Strip it of all its supernatural
elements, and you have the story of a mother who has to take care of
children even when she can't take care of herself. That is as
compelling and unpleasant as the ghosts themselves.
When the film finally get's going, it
goes off in a completely unexpected direction. When they finally give
an explanation for all of the supernatural goings-on, it is not at
all what you expect. But it is the perfect twist: shocking yet
inevitable. After having seen it, I could not imagine the film ending
any other way. This film manages to be even more powerful each time
you watch it, and a lot of that comes down to the ending it has.
The Others took a great premise and
went off in a completely different direction. A character driven
ghost story, light on frills and thrills. A spellbinding look into a
state of mind most people would rather not see. A meditation on duty
and dependence. A slow-burning, creepy, dread-filled, tragic,
subdued, and, most of all, smart supernatural thriller.
People often remember childhood as the
best day's of their lives. It was all just running around carefree
and playing. Every day was adventure, and the worst conceivable
atrocity was sitting in school on a nice day. Whatever problems you
had seemed trivial looking back through an adult's eyes. In the
Devil's Backbone, Guillermo Del Toro tries to remind us all just what
it feels like to be a child.
The film takes place near the end of
the Spanish Civil War, in an orphanage for the children of dead
soldiers. In the center of the orphanage is a bomb that had failed to
go off. Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is left there by his mentor (for his
own safety, but from a child's perspective it feels like being
abandoned). The other kid's start picking on him, and every night he
sees the ghost of a dead boy trying to scare him off. None of the
adult's will believe him, and none of the children like him enough to
care one way or the other.
The Devil's Backbone focuses on one
aspect of childhood that is rarely shown in film: powerlessness.
These kid's are pushed and pulled by adult politics they have no
influence over. They barely understand what is going on. There is
nothing they can do to prevent what is happening. And it's not just
the children that are powerless. The adult's of the orphanage are on
the losing side of the war. If they were discovered, they and the
children they are responsible for would be shot as traitors. They are
pushed and pulled by national politics that they have no influence
over. The world of The Devil's Backbone is one of helplessness and
dread.
The film never shies away from the
wrongness of its premise. Children die. The first shot of the film
is the death of a child and the hiding of his body. When he comes
back as a ghost, the makeup effects only serve to make him appear
more childlike. They act like kid's act and talk like kid's talk. The
film's ending evokes William Golding's Lord of the Flies, with the
children's innocence lost.
The thing that really makes the film
work is how good the adult character's are. Dr Casares. (Federico
Luppi) is a simple man of science who doesn't believe in any of that
superstitious nonsense. He is fiercely dedicated to the children and
his wife. He is the clever and inspiring and protective, the perfect
father figure for all of these children. Then there's Jacinto
(Eduardo Noriega), who isn't so perfect. In fact, he is absolute
scum. He might be the antagonist who has angered me personally on
this list. He is a man who never grew out of bullying to get his way,
stuck raising orphans for a lost cause. He becomes increasingly
deranged and desperate as the film goes on. Just when you think he is
as bad as he could possibly be, he becomes much worse.
Guillermo Del Toro is a complicated,
almost paradoxical director, and this film is the perfect example of
that. A bleak story told stylishly. The film at times is genuinely
beautiful, which makes the rest of it even more disturbing by
contrast. He makes you care about the people, but then does horrible
thing's to them. His horror film's feel more like Greek tragedies
than the exciting, frenetic slashers you so often see from other
filmmakers. That's what makes them so compelling.
Paranormal Activity is a found footage
film without all of the baggage that has traditionally become
associated with the style. For the majority of the film, the camera
is mounted on a tripod, looking over the film's two reasonably
interesting character's. There is no anonymous cameraman, no
pointless shaky-cam footage, and no filler footage of people running
from place to place. Even more important than that, things happen in
this movie. Rather than the camera spinning around furiously trying
to catch shadows of something on film, the stationary camera catches
all of the events as they occur.
The film spends most of its time on one
image that has since become synonymous with the film: the camera
dutifully watching over our main character's as they sleep. That
stationary shot builds a tremendous amount of tension even when
nothing remotely scary is going on. When a camera lingers on
something, it is universally understood that that thing is important.
This camera does nothing but linger on things, we are absolutely
ready for something exciting to happen throughout the entire film. It
gets to the point that the door creaking is just as terrifying in
this film as a serial killer running in with a machete would be in
any other.
But the film doesn't stay at the doors
creaking stage for long. Before too long, bangs, loud noises and
moving furniture become the norm. We see ghostly footprints,
unnatural fire, and even possession. Originally, the thing seems to
be a simple ghost, but as the film goes on it becomes more and more
clear that it is a demonic entity. Rather than simply haunting a
house, it is after our main character, and it has been for a long
time.
The main character's in question are
fairly well done. There is Katie (Katie Featherson), a superstitious
but otherwise extremely likable person who basically drags her
boyfriend (Micah Sloat) into her quest to prove the house is
haunting. I particularly liked Micah's story arc, the boyfriend who
goes along with all of the paranormal stuff to protect his
girlfriend's mental well-being, until he realizes it is her physical
well-being that he needed to be protecting.. The character's are
simple archetypes, well done, which lets the film focus on all of the
supernatural elements.
It is not an exaggeration to call this
film the next Blair Witch Project. Both film's are simple stories
about thing's that go bump in the night. Both film's made legendary
profits off the backs of interesting marketing gimmicks. Both
reinvigorated the found footage genre when they were released,
spawning hordes of imitators. Both give hope to young genre
filmmakers everywhere, standing tall as proof that you can succeed
without a budget.
The only difference between this film
and Blair Witch was that Paranormal Activity was actually good.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Rob
Zombie's first film, House of 1000 Corpses, good, but it was quite
entertaining. A family of serial killer's having fun doing what they
do best. The entire film looked like an album cover with it's use of
intense colors and imagery. It was a popcorn flick, something to
stick in the middle of a horror marathon to lighten the mood a bit. I
was surprised to learn it had a sequel, and even more surprised by
what the sequel ended up being.
The Devil's Rejects takes the family
from House and throws them harshly into the real world. The opening
scene really says it all: a massive police renders almost half of the
family dead or captured in the first ten minutes of the film. After
the rest of them escape, the police search the house. They discover
cages filled with people, bodies in varying stages of dismemberment
pretty much in every room. The film cuts to a news station covering
as bodies begin being pulled out of a mass grave. The opening makes
one thing abundantly clear: this film was going to have a completely
different tone from the first.
The thing that makes this film stand
out is how tight the focus is on the villains. The film follows the
rest of the family and never tries to make excuses for them. They
don't just steal a car because they are desperate to get away they
gleefully murder the car's owner first. They need a room to stay in
for a while until they can escape, so they talk their way into the
first room they can and immediately start tormenting the people there
in any way they can. These aren't desperate criminals struggling to
survive, they are sadistic killers who don't care if they get caught.
They're like a Manson family Bonnie and Clyde.
But by the end of the film, you are
rooting for them. The supposed good guys are just as bad, just as
sadistic. He wants to give the family their just desserts. And you
can't stand him. You love baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) and Captain
Spaulding (Sid Haig). You even grow a soft spot for the way Otis
(Bill Mosely) bickers with the rest of them. They are a close family
that you don't want to see torn apart, even after they start skinning
peoples' faces off to make face-masks. Seriously, it is hard to
describe just how messed up these guys actually are. It is hard to
make you genuinely care about likable character's, and this film has
you feeling afraid for a family that calls themselves the Devil's
Rejects.
Technically, the film holds up well.
Rob Zombie shows a mastery of using the soundtrack to show theme and
setting. He seems to understand the mechanics of horror film; he
knows the reasoning behind convention and he knows when to break it
(and, almost more importantly, when not to).
The film ends in basically the only way
it could have, but it is somehow completely alien. The events that
happen are basically the events you would expect after the film's
opening, but the way you feel about it has completely changed. It is
us, the audience, who changed from the events in the film, rather
than the character's themselves.
One of the signs of a great director is
his ability to create the proper weight in all of his scenes. You
will see a lot of horror movie director's pile the gore on, trying to
gross people out with the sheer quantity. That doesn't usually work
out because having such excessive amounts of gore tends to pull
people out of a story. People have no idea what it feels like to have
an arm severed cleanly with a machete, where the body seemingly
offers no resistance. Scaling the gore back makes it more personal.
Scaling back the gore and adding proper weight makes movies feel much
more violent than they really are. You will see this effect if you go
back and watch the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The film audition does something
remarkable: it takes what easily could have been a cartoonishly
ridiculous amount of gore and gives it enough weight to be incredibly
effecting. This is as disturbing as it sounds. This film has scenes
of torture and madness that you would be hard pressed to see done
better in any other film. Scenes in this film would have had me and
my friends laughing hysterically if they weren't so disgusting. The
film is hard to watch even when nothing is going on.
The story is fairly bare bones:
Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) sets up a fake audition to try and
find the perfect girlfriend. He meets Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina),
who he falls in love with almost immediately. She turns out not to be
perfect. Unbeknownst to him, she is dangerously obsessed with him.
She sits at her phone day and night waiting for his call. She is also
completely inconsiderate, barely even feeding the person she keeps
tied in a burlap sack in her apartment (it's also a bad sign that she
keeps someone tied up in her apartment).
One of the thing's I like best was the
build-up. The film is very slow. We know almost immediately that she
is dangerously insane, but we still watch their romance unfold. There
are scenes that are almost heartfelt, but because we know it can't
end well, they wind up bittersweet. Once he start's checking out the
girls past, we start seeing the breadth of her insanity. You never
actually see her hurt anyone until the final third of the movie, but
there are stories and rumors that will make your skin crawl.
Once the torture scenes start, the film
seems to go completely insane. Aoyama, who spent the whole film being
a sweetheart, is still a sweetheart as she is murdering people.
Slowly. She giggles childishly as she cuts through body parts with
cheese wire. The tension was so high throughout the film,You never
managed to get comfortable, and then the film ends with one of the
most uncomfortable scenes I think I've ever seen. Actually, that's
not true: the film doesn't end there. Takashi Miike manages to
torture you for even longer after that scene.
Audition is a film of great moments.
I've never been able to get some of the scenes from this film out of
my head. The film maintaned such a sense of dread that it put my
teeth on edge. The film didn't have to set up a scare to be scary, so
when it did it was absolutely insane. If you only watch one horror
film by Takashi Miike, watch Audition.
When you think of east Asian countries
where monster movies are popular, you probably think of Japan and
Japan alone. In the last ten movies, there was only one really great
monster mash, and it was made In South Korea. The Host is really
compelling, simultaneously sprawling and contained. The events in the
film are large-scale, effecting the entire country in one way or
another, but the film itself stays incredibly focused on how those
events effect a single family. The film gives up a bit of scope
compared to something like Godzilla, but instead gains a major dose
of humanity. It was a good trade.
Gang-du Park(Song Kang-Ho) is a bit
slow. He works at his father's snack stand cooking squid and falling
asleep at the job. He has a problem supporting his daughter Hyun-seo,
but
he is managing. He is the big screw-up of the family. His sister is
an Olympic-class archer, and his brother is a college graduate. He's
been coasting through life on the skin of his teeth.
When
a monstrous creature surfaces from the Han river, his daughter goes
missing in the confusion. Everyone who was brought in contact with
the monster is taken into the custody of the U.S. Military, because
of a virus scare. Now the family has to escape the government to find
Hyun-seo and save her from the beast. They all put everything on the
line to try to save Hyun-seo.
The
virus scare is only a ruse. It's covering up the fact that the
government poured hundreds of gallons of dirty formaldehyde into the
river, which created the monster in the first place. As they get more
and more desperate to kill the beast and hide their mistakes, they
decide to release a toxic chemical called Agent Yellow to kill the
beast and to serve as an anti virus agent for the virus that doesn't
exist. It's not that often that the Americans are portrayed as the
bad guy in a film, so it could turn some people off. The government
brings in dangerous chemicals and weapons, but the people on the
ground don't have respect for the place they are occupying, so
screw-ups happen. It does give pause to think that the government's
actions in the film are based on real events in recent history.
The
film's tight focus works well with the film's themes. Governments are
too focused on the big picture, so a single family tragedy is below
their notice. Hurting one man to keep up appearances seems like a
reasonable trade on the macro level, but it is obviously monstrous
from that man's perspective. In addition, keeping the focus on the
family allows for some genuinely touching moments. All of the main
actors are solid, and all of the characters are amazing. Any scene
where the whole family is together is a scene worth watching.
Perhaps
the film's one weakness is its poor CGI. The film was made with a $10
budget, a titanic amount for a Korean film, but not quite enough to
make it rival a proper Hollywood production. The monster itself is
impressively designed, and entire film is well-directed. The film is
set to have a Hollywood remake soon, but I doubt it will look any
better. A skilled director with a good design and bad effects tends
to look better than an average director with poor design but great
effects.
Horror and Comedy inherently work well
together. When a film ramps up the tension, the audience is looking
for an excuse to laugh. A good joke right then would send the entire
theater into stitches. That is why so many horror films have
unintentionally hilarious bits, little things that wouldn't be
noticed in another genre wind up causing gales of laughter in a
slasher. The comedy works as a release of tension, essentially
working in the same way a cheap jump scare would. Audiences will
remember a great bit much more fondly than they will a cat jumping
out of a closet at them. As an added bonus, the right brand of pitch
black comedy can be funny in the moment, but also deeply disturbing
once the laughter dies down. It's very tricky to pull off, but when
it works it really works.
American Psycho is the king of
disturbing black horror comedies, and it is all because of Christian
Bale's performance. He plays Patrick Bateman, the king of vapid
consumer culture. The only thing he likes more than reservations at
the most expensive restaurant in town is dropping hints about his
murderous hobby. He is cold and arrogant, obsessive and cruel. He has
no real connection to his friends, they are just people who admire
his stuff. He doesn't really know the first thing about them, and
they don't really know the first thing about him.
At first, this is played up for some
laughs. He and his friends all buy $600 dollar suits, but they all
look identical to each other. In their spare time they admire each
others business cards. Patrick Bateman almost cries when he realizes
that his is inferior to Paul Allen's. No one can tell any of them
apart, because they all make such an effort to look “good” that
they all look identical. At one point, the whole gang starts making
fun of Patrick, not realizing that he was still among them. Even when
killings start happening, they somehow wind up funny.
The film never lets up, though. At some
point, a switch seems to flip. Patrick Bateman's cold emptiness
starts becoming more and more creepy. The character never changes,
the film doesn't even really change. It just keeps going, and you
start realizing that the film was serious the whole time. The second
half doesn't have a whole lot of laughs.
One of the things I like most about the
film is what it leaves unstated. In order for his friends to not
realize how empty Patrick Bateman really is, how uncaring he is, they
would have to be as uncaring themselves. None of them really care
about anything, they are all just going through the motions. They go
through all of these rituals because that is what normal people do.
Any of them could be doing anything and none of us would even know.
That's a very scary thought. Their alleged friend is going through a
mental breakdown and no one even notices or cares. Even more, we
never really know just how much of the film happened, and what bits
were all in the main character's head. This is all capped off by one
of my favorite lines in film history.
“there
is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no
deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my
telling. This confession has meant nothing. "
The ending of the film is that there is
no ending. It was all meaningless. It couldn't have ended any other
way.
You'd be hard pressed to find a film
like Battle Royale made in America. The subject matter, brutal
violence done to children by children, is one of the few big taboos
that American studios won't touch. Even in the age of Saw style
torture movies, there are still lines that Film producers won't
cross. There isn't a whole lot of demand for a movie like Battle
Royale, and for good reason.
The story is very minimalist. The
government fears that the younger generation will overthrow their
regime, so to keep them in line they cart a busload of 13 and 14
year-olds to an island and have them kill each other. The last living
person is free to go. If more than one person is alive after three
days, they all die. “Exchange Students” who appear to have
extensive combat training are constantly trying to cull the herd.
The film really tries to hammer home
the wrongness of the events. There is an extremely perky assistant
who enthusiastically explains how and why people are going to be
killing each other. The children all look like children and act like
children would act. They group together with their closest friends
and try to wait it out. They all know they can't wait it out, they
just try not to think about that. As the days go on, something's
gotta give.
It is easy for a film with such over
the top violence to appear campy, but it never crosses that line.
This is a film that has massacre after massacre after massacre. The
film is full of nameless people killing and being killed. Unlike in a
slasher film, there is real weight behind it. It is a tragedy when a
nameless character dies in this film, as it should be.
There is a surprisingly prolific genre
of films that throw innocent people into arenas and force them to
kill each other, but Battle Royale is my personal favorite because it
emphasizes the political aspect. The film has 42 students as victims,
an unusually high amount for this type of thing. It allows them to
throw bloodbath after bloodbath at the audience, have deaths of real
meaningful characters, and still have more to give. One of the film's
most affecting scenes was a group of 8 students holed up in a
lighthouse. One is convinced that her friend is a murderer, and she
slowly becomes more and more paranoid about it. Eventually, she tries
to poison her food. Once this is found out, everyone in the
lighthouse starts butchering each other. Someone was trying to kill
them, and they had to protect themselves. None survived.
Battle Royale hammers home the same
points again and again. It never moves to far beyond its central
concept, but it does that concept so well that I can't help but be
impressed. After watching Funny Games, I am convinced that the best
way to speak out against violence is to show the result of violence,
and Battle Royale does that well. Check it out.
A family is shattered by the death of
their parents. The eldest brother David Hamilton (Sameul Child) is
desperate to try and pick up the pieces, assuming all of the
responsibility in the house. The Fraternal twins Wendell (Joseph
mckelheer) and Darlene (McKenzie Firgens), on the other hand, just
want to do whatever they want, to hell with the consequences. The
youngest, Francis, is just starting to go through adolescence, an he
doesn't really get the rest of his family. He's the only one who ever
questions the morality of capturing people and torturing them for
their sweet, sweet blood. Did I not mention that? They're also
cannibals.
The core of the movie is the idea that
Francis is an outside observer to all of these goings-on. He doesn't
like the killing, but he loves his family too much to turn them in.
He doesn't have any friends other than his family because the family
is constantly moving from place to place. Eventually, he winds up
getting really close to one of the victims they have locked in their
basement. She keeps trying to convince him to abandon his family and
his home by letting her out of the cage. The character of Francis is
incredibly sympathetic, no matter what he chooses he is the only one
who pays the price.
David Hamilton, on the other hand, is
just generally unnerving. He is really flat, he is constantly trying
to be the perfect older brother. No matter what he is doing, he
always has the same posture, the same tone. He has nice conversations
with the people he is murdering, as he is murdering them, and he gets
upset that the conversation seems really one-sided. That's just rude
after all, he was asking them a question. He gives off this vague
sense of danger, you never really know what he could be thinking or
doing. For all you know he could be ready to explode at any time.
You always know what the twins are
thinking, because they are always thinking the same thing: Let's
terrorize some people or have sex. It's hard to discuss one twin
without simultaneously talking about the other. They are one and the
same in a lot of ways. They give no thought to the consequences of
their actions. They'll lure a kid from school home and viciously
murder them, only for the kid to turn out to be the daughter of a
police officer. They are the sole reason the family is constantly
moving. They are predators, they enjoy the thrill of the hunt.
Whereas David needs the control of someone tied down to get his work
done, they enjoy a runner. The slight chance of them escaping is part
of the fun. They are incredibly close, much closer to themselves than
they are to anyone else in the family. They are very, very close.
It's disturbing.
The Hamiltons is another After Dark
Horrorfest film, and it really sold me on the idea of the Horrorfest.
This film is pretty unorthodox. Watching a bunch of flawed but
interesting movies Isn't a bad way to spend a day, especially if
every once in a while you get to watch an excellent interesting
movie. Even if you don't like the Hamiltons, you are unlikely to see
anything like it for a while.
The '80s were a great time to be a
horror fan. All of the kids who spent their nights watching The Curse of
Frankenstein had grown up to direct horror films of their very own. Studios, emboldened by the box office success of films like Jaws
and Alien, were willing to sink real money into
films they wouldn't even have touched before, and special effects had
advanced to the point that a good team with no money could look
almost as good as a big budget film. And the 1980 release of Friday
the 13th would lay the blueprint for the the entire
slasher Genre. So, while I was counting down horror movies from the
'00s, I couldn't help but start missing the '80's. House of the
Devil saved the day.
House of the Devil is indistinguishable
from a film from the '80's. It takes the idea of the old school
throwback and commits to it fully. The people listen to The Fixx on
their Walkman's while driving around in old school Volvo's. The main character
is a babysitter who is preyed upon by a satanic cult. It uses camera
angles and zooms I never realized fell out of favor until I
recognized them in this film and noticed I hadn't seen them in a
while. The film was released on VHS, Seriously. It's actually hard to
believe it came out in 2009.
While the film's basic setup, a
babysitter whose sitting for a bunch of murdering satanists who wants
to sacrifice her, sounds like just another gory shlock-fest, the film
actually impressed me. For roughly the first hour, nothing really
happens. It's just a slow building of tension. You know what's
coming, but not how or when. Sure, there is some blood and murder
going on a little bit near the end, but the majority of the film time
is just waiting, knowing that somethings gotta give.
In a movie where the main antagonists
are satanists hungry for sacrifice, it is amazing that the thing the
film focuses most on is the creepiness of babysitting. The film tries
to milk the scares from the mundane angle as long as it can before
getting into the supernatural elements. She walks around an almost
empty house in the middle of nowhere. It's dark, and you have to look
around to try to find light switches when you enter a new room
because you don't know where any are. The whole place is unfamiliar, the
people are kind of weird. If you accidentally break their stuff you
have to pay for it, and if you screw up they are going to go look for
someone else instead. Babysitting is frankly terrifying, if you get
right down to it. The babysitter winds up scaring herself, and her
fear infects us.
It's easy to scare someone with a bang
and a loud nose, or with a knife-wielding maniac chasing after you.
This film scares you when nothing is happening. Jump scares and
mountains of gore are all you see in a lot of today's movies. You get
almost none of that here. The horror is in an odd bank of windows, or
a disconcerting camera angle, or the music suddenly stopping. The
director, Ti West, has to know some secret about making great films
that I don't. Those were the most compelling 55 minutes of someone
slowly walking through a house I've ever seen.
I guess the Devil is in the details.
(I swear never to make a pun that
terrible again.)
Sometimes, life just keeps piling bad stuff on top of each other. Sometimes, you try to get over the death of your husband by going cave diving with friends in the worlds most claustrophobic cave. Sometimes there is a cave-in. Sometimes, you find out that your friends are untrustworthy and cruel. Sometimes the claustrophobic cave with the cruel friends and dead husband is also full of monsters. The Descent is just one bad day that won't end (because you can't see the sun down in the cave).
This film uses the cave system to great effect. Seemingly endless black chambers turn into impossibly small alcoves the group has to squeeze through which turn into steep crevices too deep to see the bottom. The cave oozes atmosphere, and there is a real sense of danger that never really leaves the place. Once you start getting into the more monstrous areas, like a pool of blood covered in viscera or a mountain of bones, it feels like a natural progression. The cave is the antagonist here, and the monsters are just one part of it.
But the monsters themselves are what really makes the movie work. It is suggested that the monsters were just humans that had adapted to the underground environment. This really fits the tone of the film, this idea that the monsters were just humans that had to be wild to survive in the cave. While they never really become sympathetic, there is enough to make you question the morality of slaughtering them. Once the characters in the film start "adapting" to the cave, becoming desperate and vicious, the film really gets interesting.
When the film gets going, the people start turning nasty. Old wounds rise to the surface and old grudges start getting settled. People get separated from each other and lost and abandoned. One person breaks her leg early on, and the question of whether or not to leave her weighs on the survivors. In its own way, the cave claims each of them, body or soul.
For a film that takes itself so
seriously throughout, Gravedancers has one campy premise. After one
of them dies in a car accident, a group of old high school friends
get together to mourn him. In an attempt to relive their old school
days, they go and do something stupid: namely breaking into the
cemetery in the middle of the night for some drunken mourning. One
thing leads to another, and they wind up angering evil spirits by
dancing on their graves. While I don't mind campy films at all, this
film is so serious and well done that the fact that it sounds so
silly makes it hard for a film like this to have an audience.
After the funeral, The films follow
Harris (dominic Purcell) and his wife Allison (Clare Kramer) and
manages to build a sense of dread quite effectively. It starts out
with the full suite of ghostly gimmicks: Creaky pipes, stuff moving
on its own accord, and mysterious hangup calls. The wife is convinced
that the person responsible for the calls is Kira (Josie Maran), one
of Harris' old flames. She becomes increasingly paranoid that Kira is
stalking her husband. Clare Kramer really sells it, I like her
character a lot. After a break-in in their house, Allison forces
Harris to go to Kira's house and confront her. That's when the real
movie starts.
Kira is half dead, her house is
completely demolished. She is delusional, bruised and battered. She
is being attacked by one of the ghosts. The scenes where she is
attacked are some of the film's most affecting. They really sell both
the brutality of the attacks and the helplessness of being beaten by
something you can't see. When Harris tries to get rest of the gang
together to see what is going he finds that Sid (Marcus Thomas) had
actually hired a group of paranormal investigators to try to help
them. After this point, the film really takes off. They creature
effects are quite good for an independent film. The spirits have
these massive grins on them full time that makes them look quite
demented. These aren't your typical melancholy specters, they like
their work.
This film was bundled as part of the
After Dark Horrorfest, what was originally billed as independent
horror films that were “too scary for theaters,” but in actuality
was more like “ cheap films we can bundle together and sell to
completionists for profit.” But each horrorfest has 3 or 4 movies
worth watching, and one or two that are really good. The Gravedancers
is one of the best films in the original Horrorfest, which actually
had some stiff competition for best movie. Watching through a bunch
of horrorfest films is a nice way to spend day, and you can expect
to see the After Dark Horrorfest make this list at least one more
time.
Martyrs is the kind of film that never
lets you get a solid footing. It keeps shifting underneath you. It's
not that you don't know what will happen next, it's that you don't
even know what can happen next. The film doesn't even let you know
what rulebook it's playing with. It seems to make an effort to defy
description: If I had to, I would call it a supernatural
psychological rape-revenge torture film, but that barely even
scratches the surface.
The film follows two best friends:
Lucie (Morjana Alaoui),
who was abducted and abused as a child, and Anna (Mylene Jampanoi),
who always try to be there for her. Lucie is haunted by a monster
that keeps trying to attack her and she always only just gets away.
She is convinced that the thing wants her to track down and murder
the people who hurt her. When she thinks she found them, she murders
them all: A husband, wife, and their two teenage children. By the
time Anna gets there, they are all dead. Anna isn't convinced that
Lucie shot the right people, but she still tries to hide the bodies
for her.
The
film's first half is based on two compelling relationships: that of
Lucie and the monster, and that of Anna and Lucie. It is suggested
early on that the monster is all in Lucie's head, but the exact
nature of the thing isn't revealed for quite a while. Anna is
convinced that it isn't real. Watching Anna try to help her friend,
even when no help is really possible, fills the film with a
melancholy that makes it so much more affecting than the average
horror film. Anna is in a lot of ways a tragic figure: she wants to
help, but all she can do is help clean up the mess.
This
doesn't even bring up the film's second half, which is easily the
most extreme shift in tone I have ever seen in a film. The first half
is a very good film, gripping and exciting and scary. But the film
grinds to a halt in the second half. The reason Lucie was tortured
as a child are revealed, the monster haunting her is explained, and
the plot up to this point is resolved. It's almost like a different
movie. It becomes bleak, repetitive and grinding. It almost hurts to
watch. Don't misunderstand me, it isn't bad. After this point, the
film is designed to be unpleasant. And it succeeds. It is tortuously
violent and gruesome, and it seems to just keep going and going and
going.
Pascal
Laugier, the writer and director of this film, said that he was
suffering from Depression when he wrote this film. I hope making the
movie helped him work through it, because the finished product has
gone on to depress millions of viewers the world over. From the
onset, the film sets you up to be shocked. It leads you on, making
you feel like you never really know what is going to happen next. And
it's a good thing too, because if everyone knew what was coming at
the outset there would be quite a few walkouts. Some film's aren't
set up to be pleasant. Martyrs doesn't want to thrill you or scare
you, it exists on its own plane and defies traditional critique. I
would not recommend this film to almost anyone, but it is really
something special.
This film is weird. It's an asian
anthology film taking one of the most popular horror directors from
South Korea (Park Chan-wook, the director of Oldboy), one of the most
well-known directors from Hong Kong (Fruit Chan, director of Made in
Hong Kong), and the legendary Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike
and having them all film a 40 minute short horror film. They are all
very disturbing and very extreme, but other than that they couldn't
be more different; Both from themselves and from any other movie I've
ever seen.
In Fruit Chan's Dumplings, a retired
actress named Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung) wants to look as young as she
ever was. She is having problems with her husband, and she wants to
rekindle their relationship. So she goes to Aunt Mei, who is rumored
to have a secret dumpling recipe that restores youth. Unfortunately,
the dumplings aren't exactly made out of wholesome ingredients. Mrs.
Li is so vain that she chokes them down time and time again for
months. But she is convinced that the dumplings aren't working fast enough. Her
uncaring husband is still uncaring. She still looks just as good as
she ever did, but she wanted to look better than that. She keeps
having Aunt Mei give her more Dumplings, and stronger. Both characters are deeply disturbing, not just in their actions,
but in their casual indifference to the obvious wrongness of what
they are doing.
The thing that really creeps me out
about this film is it's plausibility. There really are people who
will do horrible things to stay young. There really are ignorant and
disgusting local customs that people believe in. Things like this
could happen; they have happened. This all combines with a truly
nihilistic ending to give the short film a lot of power. (No, I'm not
going to tell you what the dumplings are made of. Watch the movie,
but not if you're squeamish)
The last thing I expected after
Dumplings was a horror film with comedic elements, but that is what I
was given with Park Chan-wook's Cut. A well liked director and his
pianist wife are taken hostage by a deranged extra. The extra had
always been poor, but he consoled himself with the thought that at
least all rich men were heartless bastards. But then he started
working on the director's films, and the director was kind and decent
to him. Now he has to prove that the good director isn't so good, and
he does this by making the director a deal: He wouldn't cut off his
wife's fingers if the director would strangle a child. It's your
standard Faustian Bargain: do you sell your principles for your life?
I know this doesn't sound like a premise for a comedy, but bear with
me for a moment.
The Extra acts completely bizarre. He
perfectly memorized all the roles he's ever been them, and seems to
take great pleasure in doing them at seemingly random times. The man
is obviously deranged, which works for the film in two different
ways. A lot of the film's humor comes from this man's non sequitor's,
but at the same time the idea of having to please this clearly
unstable maniac also generates horror in the long run. It's like
having your cake and eating it too. The result is the funniest movie
to ever have one of the character's finger get puree'd in a blender.
Except for Peter Jackson's Dead Alive.( I think I watch too many
movies.)
The final film is Takashi Miiki's Box,
and I'm still not entirely sure what the hell happened. It is
definitely about a person's recurring nightmare of being buried
alive. Other than that, I could be completely wrong about what it is
about. There are quite a few other aspects that are also probably a
part of the nightmare, and it gets to the point where the entire film
could just have been a dream. In order to avoid having to write “What
most likely happened is” before every sentence, just be aware that
the whole film is vague.
We follow Kyoko, a young woman trying
to move on from her childhood as a circus circus. Her and her sister
were an act together, contortionists who would fit themselves into
tiny boxes. But she was always jealous of her sister, who got all the
attention from the ringmaster. The Ringmaster, incidentally, is a
pedophile. In a fit of rage, Kyoko locks her sister in her box and
attacks the ringmaster. The recurring nightmare is of the ringmaster
tracking her down and locking her in a box with her sister forever.
There is also a repeated image of the two of them contorted
impossibly closely forever.
The film has one of my favorite twist
endings of all time. It does what twist endings are meant to do. It
allows you to see the film in a new way, you interpret the dream
completely differently after the ending than you do before. That's
why it is so hard to know what is going on. It seems like a mixture
of memory and nightmare, dealing with Kyoko's guilt. But after the
ending we don't really know what we know. All we are presented with
is a character''s psyche, damaged and strange. It is up to the viewer
to put a story to it, and the story will almost always tell you just
as much about yourself as the character. That's why I love this
movie.
This film has one of the most bizarrely
specific niches of any film: Fans of Extreme East Asian horror films
who also like anthologies, horror comedies and contemplative dream
sequences. If even half of that sounds compelling, you should really
check this out. But you'll never be able to eat dumplings again
Found footage films are a dime a dozen
these days. Ever since The Blair Witch Project, any film trying to be
“realistic” had one faceless character with almost no dialogue
holding the film's only camera. No tripods exist in the world of
found footage films. It takes a lot for one of these films to get
noticed, and even more for them to be remembered. The 2006 film Rec was
one of the good ones, and you can expect to see it somewhere on this
list in the future. Rec 2 takes the strengths of the original (great
pacing and perhaps the best jump scares in jump scare history.), and
turns it up to 11. They try to make everything bigger, faster, and
stronger. And it works. Rec 2 was so good that it has not one but
two sequels currently in production.
Rec 2 takes place almost immediately after
the end of the original, and follows a swat team as they enter an
apartment full of zombies. But these aren't your normal zombies: In
Rec 2, the infected are possessed by demons. They can be warded off by
crosses and good old fashioned gunfire, but they will just keep
coming unless the original host is found and destroyed. The Swat team
needs to find and kill the host, while securing a blood sample for
testing.
The film's strongest aspect is this
unique zombie mythology, which allows for a lot of very impressive
scenes that couldn't have happened in a more traditional zombie
movie. From the point where one of the main characters reveals being
sent by the Vatican to try and stop this infection, you know it is
going to be something different. They milk this for all its worth.
All of the zombies are controlled by a single entity, and it has a
few tricks up its sleeve for people who think they are only facing
rabid humans. The final act in particular is both novel and
terrifying.
There is a cost to this greater
ambition, however. While the original Rec felt perfect with only the
one camera, the sequel really struggles against the limits it sets on
itself. Each of the main characters has a camera on their weapon now,
and that still doesn't feel like enough. When the second act rolls
around, the film screeches to a halt in a really unnatural fashion,
which almost certainly could've been avoided had the two talented
directors not had to accommodate the found footage style of real-time
filmmaking with no cutting between multiple viewpoints. All in all,
I'm thankful the next Rec Sequel uses a more traditional style of
filmmaking.
Rec 2 is often thought of as the Aliens
to Rec's Alien, but I don't agree with this. Even if it were just an
excellent action film sequel,, it would be worth watching. It is more
than that. The last half hour of Rec 2 is just as good as anything
in Rec. It has all the adrenaline and fun of an action film, but it
still manages to stick with you when you are trying to get to sleep
at night in a way no action movie can. Rec 2 is a horror film, and
one of the best.
When Sam Raimi makes a horror movie,
you sit up and take notice. His first feature length film, The Evil
Dead, wasn't perfect, but it is still remembered as a cult classic.
Evil Dead II was perfect, its first half a genuinely creepy tale of
one man fighting against a horde of demon's slowly driving him insane
and its second half a kickass action movie when he picks up a shotgun
and a chainsaw and starts fighting back, with a vein of black comedy
throughout to provide cohesion. I doubt I even need to say anything
about Army of Darkness.
After spending the 2000's making two
extremely good superhero films, he is finally back to horror with
Drag me To Hell, and its got the blood of Evil Dead II running in its
veins. When Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) finds herself on the
wrong end of a gypsy curse, she has three days to find out a way to
escape before she is damned to hell. While she looks, she is being
more and more severely tormented by the Lamia, the demon that is
trying to take her there. The films strongest aspect is its ability
to meld its sense of humor with the horror. For instance, she goes
and meets a psychic to try and expel the demon. This psychic is
obviously money-hungry, and that winds up being milked for a lot of
laughs. But, in the end, the main character is still putting all of
her hope in this person who could pretty easily just be a conman, so
the same scenes also manage to extend the helplessness of her
situation, which works brilliantly.
This film is disgusting, but not in
the traditional gory way. It's the kind of thing that never really
happens in real life, so it never even occurs to you that it is as
nasty as it is. Some of the gags wouldn't look entirely remiss in a
Looney Tunes cartoon. At one point, Christine accidentally swallows a
fly, and you still here the fly buzzing around in her stomach for the
rest of the movie. Half of the film is hysterical because it is so
over the top, and half of it is really quite nasty, but my friends
and I can't agree which scenes go in which half.
I'm always a sucker for a good haunting
film. They just work so well: the ghosts (or Lamias) start off slow
and slowly ramp up the terror of their victim. They can be anywhere,
at anytime. They are inherently unknowable and always a threat.
Something supernatural just gives good directors so much more room to
work with to set up good scenes. In a slasher movie, it usually
doesn't make a lot of sense for the serial killer to start slow and
ramp up the tension from there, but the film needs that to work. But
in a film where the Monsters only motivation is to scare someone and
mess with their head, everything works perfectly.
Because the monsters motivations and
the directors motivations are exactly the same. Sam Raimi wants to
mess with our heads, and he is the best at it.
